History of
the Shire of Crosston

A reminiscence by Teleri Tawel

"I recall it as an assembly called in 1993, by Alan McMillan, at a local church hall to dissolve the Shire of PrenTal for which he had been bearing the burden alone for some time. It was attended by people from several other groups, hoping to attach the soon-to-be homeless SCA'ers of Palo Alto, Stanford, Los Altos, Mountain View and Moffet Field.

"At the time, as Collette remembers, the most active group in the area was Sir John Theophilus's sippe/ household: himself, Branwen, Gwydion, Geoffrey Mathias, and myself (Teleri). We called it Hartsholm/ Hearts' Home under the device "Argent a semy of hearts gules, a tower and bordure azure". We'd agreed to keep the "official" household strictly to those immediate members, but there were, of course, our children (Sunny), girlfriends, and most welcome guests camping with us at every event. Indeed, although those all eagerly pitched in to help, the camping group had quickly grown beyond the one household's ability to plan and provide for.

"Returning to the organizational meeting -- It was indeed Sir John who recommended that we forego the blandishments of the other groups and found our own. So it was motioned and so it was passed. Sir Richard of Aldertree -- who was Prince of the Mists at the time and was attending as such -- called us the "un-named shire, Shire X" (a christening which he has modestly neglected to mention in his memoir). We voted in Sir John as Seneschal. Here my memories become fuzzy. I believe that Geoffrey Mathias became our first Minister of Arts, and Aaron of Buckminster our first Exchequer. Sunny (Bridget at the time, now Constanza) and I jointly took on the job of Shire Herald (a required position for all official groups at the time.) Again I grow fuzzy in my memories, but I believe that Elspeth became our first Chronicler.

"In the first issue of the "Crosston Tapestry", published within that month, we voted on a name and device. Deciding to keep Prince Richard's inspired designation, we choose "Crosston" both because it implied the "X" and because we seemed to be the crossroads of the South Bay. (It also proved reasonably easy to document for Lord Laurel.) Our device (replacing PrenTal's "Per chevron azure and ermine, in base a coast redwood tree erased proper, its base environed of a laurel wreath vert") echoed the "X" theme "Sable, a saltire argent, on a chief or, three laurel wreaths sable". I believe that we received a "nice armoury" from the then-Laurel Herald (which is high praise indeed) when the name and device became registered in January 1994."

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